


This Useless Happiness

by OracleGlass



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen, post-After the Fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OracleGlass/pseuds/OracleGlass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's more of a struggle to deal with happiness. My attempt to write a "what happens next" story.  Inspiration and title taken from a poem by Caroline Kizer - <i>There is only this useless happiness as gift</i>. A thousand thanks to fairmer for the very speedy beta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Useless Happiness

Angel never outright admitted it, but he had loved working for Wolfram &amp; Hart. That is, he had loved certain things about it - the windows cleverly spelled to permit light to wash over him, the fleet of seriously flash cars, the way people jumped up when he walked in the room. He did know, of course, that all of these things were part of the clever seduction package concocted for him by the Senior Partners, but sometimes, when he had found himself basking in sunlight like a drowsy bear, he thought that at least they had read him accurately. How horrible would the job have been if they had picked all the wrong temptations?

He thinks these days that if Cordy were here, she'd surely be teasing him mercilessly about Nina. "Another blonde chippie," she'd say, rolling her eyes at him. "That's why we never worked out, Angel. I just don't make a great blonde." He can think these things now, can think of Cordelia and her sharp tongue and her kind eyes without sadness. He wonders if she would have liked Nina - would have gone shopping for cute outfits with her, would have shared giggles and stories. He can see the two of them killing a bottle of wine, surrounded by bags from boutiques he's never heard of, light caught in their hair. It's an image he never gives voice to, but holds close nonetheless.

It's funny, since you'd think that he would have outgrown gothic, operatic statements long before he found himself on a dark Los Angeles street in the midst of a hellish amount of carnage. He had been streaming rain and blood and holding - impossibly, of course - the head of a dragon. Its teeth had still been snapping violently, but grew weaker with every convulsion, and finally had subsided with a last chatter. Gunn, still bleeding, had sagged against a wall, laughing in short, bubbling gasps. "That's funny, man," he had coughed. "That is seriously badass."

Hamilton's blood had proven more effective than Angel could have ever guessed, coursing through his dead veins like black fire. At times, moving from snapping a demon's neck to evading another's downward sword swing, he had wondered if he was moving too fast to be seen, reduced to a killing blur. Standing in the aftermath, he had panted quietly, while behind him Illyria and Spike hoisted an unconscious Gunn. At that point, he had wondered if this were all real or simply another con job by the Powers.

Faith had winked at him, slinging the huge battleaxe she was carrying over her shoulder with casual flair. One day he would have to ask her how she knew, how she had found them in the alleyway with a gang of new Slayers eager for instruction in the method of mayhem and carnage, had fought her way to them. Had she told Buffy or Giles where she was going? Knowing Faith, she had smuggled them away without anybody in charge being the wiser. At that moment he was too blurry to ask questions, his body singing with exhaustion and the aftermath of battle-frenzy. All he had able to do was kiss her cheek before she disappeared back into the night, hips swinging. "Later," she called out over her shoulder, young Slayers following her like ducklings. As she left, he heard her humming to herself.

Funny, how things never turn out the way you'd expect. Sitting back in his office chair, Angel stretches out a hand simply to see that it was still there, to see that he isn't, in fact, dust carried off by the breeze. Funny, that.

The fight in the alley had been six months ago. Six months of scrabbling, of sitting by Gunn's bedside wondering if he would live or die, of picking up the pieces left to them to slowly, painfully begin to rebuild. They had been leveled, and now they would begin again, because that was all that was left to them.

The Hyperion hadn't been habitable by this point, so they move to a long-abandoned bowling alley a short hop away. A laconic, tattooed magician leases them the property, and reconfigures a few protection spells to work for them, but refused to get any more involved. "Not interested in being your new pet wizard, vampire. But you'll find somebody soon enough. World's full of suicidal fools willing to throw themselves on the tracks before the train rolls by." He turned out to be absolutely right: eventually two Watchers decide that looking after headstrong young Slayers wasn't at all their bag, and show up on the doorstep, having somehow secured their release from the Council - or perhaps they followed a certain Watcher's tendencies to go rogue. The promise of being able to spend their time researching without having a Slayer's life on their hands is tempting enough to get them to sign on.

Three Slayers join up as well, signing on as independent agents and disdaining the traditional Watcher/Slayer setup. One of the girls simply want to stay in L.A. where she can keep a close eye on her family, one is sent by Faith (along with a note that says "She's good, but don't let her plan anything, for God's sake") and one comes out of curiosity and stays, saying she feels needed. Angel suspects the real reason is that she has a thing for Gunn. He doesn't question their motives; they prove themselves to be solid fighters, and that's all he asks.

Things have thawed just enough that they talk to Giles occasionally, both of them gracefully refusing to talk about anything in the past. And Willow, kind-hearted, emails with news of everyone in effervescent emails that go on forever but don't say all that much. Nobody brings up the topic of Buffy, and it all goes easier that way. Some things need a little more time to scab over.

Spike leaves to run his own branch of the agency in New York, Illyria opting to go with him. Things seem to be going well, but Angel secretly wonders if Illyria is making most of the big decisions. He thinks about all of Illyria's relentless drive turned loose without a purpose, and shudders. Spike has promised never to take her to Washington, D.C. She may have gotten over the worst of her desire to rule, but it's best not to tempt her. Once every two months, both offices meet up in Chicago to trade no-shit-there-I-was stories, drink far too much, and make sure everybody is caught up on the office scuttlebutt. Angel is surprised that he actually misses Spike from time to time, but the feelings usually pass pretty quickly. He's too busy with Los Angeles, and writing Spike angry memos about his expense reports, and wondering if they should open up a new branch of the office in San Antonio.

He and Nina turn out to share a taste for Doris Day movies, seventies variety shows, Thai food. She takes over as office manager since, she says merrily, it's important for people to see werewolves as productive members of society. She's good at soothing frazzled clients, brews pots and pots of truly repulsive herbal tea, and has a knack for keeping the office humming along. She also knows, with a cold certainty, that one night Angel will simply not return. She can see it happening - can see one of their operatives returning to the office with a grim look and a handful of dust. And barring that almost certain end, or even barring the two of them breaking up in tears and accusations like a normal couple, she knows that she will age, turning from gold to silver. He will, or course, remain the same. She doesn't bring it up often, preferring, she says, to let things in the future stay in the future, but Angel remembers the Mayor offering him advice on the same subject. He thinks about saying something to her, but never does.

Truthfully, he isn't preoccupied with preventing his moment of perfect happiness anymore. Too much has been lost, eaten away in small rat bites, for him to still fear that moment where his soul loses its moorings and wafts away on the exhale. The day Connor graduates magna cum is perhaps the closest he comes, but it doesn't happen, and Gunn, sitting in the auditorium with Angel, can lower the stake concealed in his coat sleeve. Angel has also made sure that every room in the new office contains a stake, tranq gun, cross, and holy water. Every new employee has been briefed on the possibilities, and each one has cheerfully agreed to kill him without hesitation should the need ever arrive. Invoices pile up on his desk. He finds a really great new broadsword in an antique shop. The copier breaks down. Work goes on. He is happy.

Just another night in L.A.

**Author's Note:**

> Afternoon Happiness
> 
> At a party I spy a handsome psychiatrist,  
> And wish, as we all do, to get her advice for free.  
> Doctor, I'll say, I'm supposed to be a poet.  
> All life's awfulness has been grist to me.  
> We learn that happiness is a Chinese meal,  
> While sorrow is a nourishment forever.  
> My new environment is California Dreamer.  
> I'm fearful I'm forgetting how to brood.  
> And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried:  
> I'm not drinking as much as I should . . .
> 
> At home, I want to write a happy poem  
> On love, or a love poem of happiness.  
> But they won't do, the tensions of everyday,  
> The rub, the minor abrasions of any two  
> Who share one space. Ah, there's no substitute for tragedy!  
> But in this chapter, tragedy belongs  
> To that other life, the old life before us.  
> Here is my aphorism of the day:  
> Happy people are monogamous,  
> Even in California. So how does the poem play
> 
> Without the paraphernalia of betrayal and loss?  
> I don't have a jealous eye or fear  
> And neither do you. In truth, I'm fond  
> Of your ex-mate, whom I name, "my wife-in-law."  
> My former husband, that old disaster, is now just funny,  
> So laugh we do, in what Cyril Connolly  
> Has called the endless, nocturnal conversation  
> Of marriage. Which may be the best part.  
> Darling, must I love you in light verse  
> Without the tribute of profoundest art?
> 
> Of course it won't last. You will break my heart  
> Or I yours, by dying. I could weep over that.  
> But now it seems forced, here in these heaven hills,  
> The mourning doves mourning, the squirrels mating,  
> My old cat warm in my lap, here on our terrace  
> As from below comes a musical cursing  
> As you mend my favorite plate. Later of course  
> I could pick a fight; there is always material in that.  
> But we don't come from fighting people, those  
> Who scream out red-hot iambs in their hate.
> 
> No, love, the heavy poem will have to come  
> From temps perdu, fertile with pain, or perhaps  
> Detonated by terrors far beyond this place  
> Where the world rends itself, and its tainted waters  
> Rise in the east to erode our safety here.  
> Much as I want to gather a lifetime thrift  
> And craft, my cunning skills tied in a knot for you,  
> There is only this useless happiness as gift.
> 
> \--Carolyn Kizer. The Nearness of You. Copper Canyon Press, 1986.


End file.
